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Once upon a time, I was an ignorant freshman, and I first learned about Raspberry Pi from a senior. Listening to him talk about those magical and interesting projects and looking at that red logo, I couldn’t help but yearn for it.
After that, I kept seeing many excellent works made with Raspberry Pi, such as the robot that twists the Rubik’s cube made by a classmate, the robotic arm on Bilibili, and later the Petoi Nybble that completely captured my heart – a mechanical cat developed by Dr. Li Rongzhong. All of these made me eager to learn about Raspberry Pi. As a student in the Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, learning how to use Raspberry Pi is quite normal.
However, time has dragged on, and in the blink of an eye, I have become a senior in my third year, but I have never had the opportunity to truly get in touch with Raspberry Pi.
Until I followed Dalvin.
I applied for a Raspberry Pi board on Dalvin because I had already applied for the school’s SRTP project to make a visual SLAM car, which can autonomously build maps and navigate in a completely unfamiliar environment. The instructor said I could use a computer to analyze images and then send them back to the car, but after seeing Dalvin’s tweet, I thought it would be simpler and more fun to use Raspberry Pi!
So during this winter vacation, I applied for a Raspberry Pi board, wanting to at least understand it and make something that barely works.
In this article, I will introduce the past and present of Raspberry Pi, summarize the pitfalls encountered during the configuration and installation of the system, and write it out to share with everyone.
Let’s start with the name of Raspberry Pi.
In 2008, Upton, who has been dedicated to making cheap and useful computers for children, created his second-generation prototype [2].
After starting, Upton’s second-generation prototype directly entered a certain version of Python, and that’s how the Raspberry Pi got its name.
As for the word Raspberry, on the one hand, he wanted to learn from the fruit traditions of Apple, Apricot Computers, and Acorn (the predecessor of chip manufacturer Arm and BBC Micro manufacturer), and on the other hand, it was a half-joke about the project’s playful nature at that time.
After that, the Raspberry Pi Foundation was born, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching the world the knowledge needed for hardware and software in computing.
Released in 2011
The Raspberry Pi Alpha version board
For Upton, what makes him happiest is not that Raspberry Pi has sold tens of millions of units, but that from then on, “you can even see those children lying on the living room floor, watching the pictures of Raspberry Pi’s TV, just like we used to.”
The situation where computer departments could not recruit students no longer exists because countless children have developed a huge interest in computing through Raspberry Pi, and everything has changed.
Yes, it’s such an idealistic story. How much knowledge is there that I don’t know about this Raspberry Pi 3B+ in my hand? It must be a lot, but even if I don’t know, what does it matter? Through Raspberry Pi, I have learned what I want to learn. This is my thought on Raspberry Pi. Even if you, as a user, have not learned the SSH protocol or do not understand what embedded systems are, it doesn’t matter. As long as you want to learn something through Raspberry Pi, just go for it.
A Raspberry Pi board
A quality card reader
A better quality 16G memory card
A display screen
A set of wireless keyboard and mouse
A Raspberry Pi case
A set of Raspberry Pi power management kit
Memory cards should not be cheap; you should buy a quality flash memory card. First, the speed will be much faster when writing the system. The first memory card I bought wrote the system at only 0.9M/s, while the second memory card soared to 9M/s. Second, the memory card also affects the writing speed of Raspberry Pi during daily use.
Regarding capacity, it is recommended to use 16G, as the system image file is already close to 15G. Smaller is not feasible, and too large is also not good. It is said that Raspberry Pi 4 supports a maximum capacity of 64G. For beginners, if you are not constantly downloading movies, 16G is enough.
However, I still recommend that you buy one. The original intention of Raspberry Pi’s design is to hope that you can take it out to play anytime and anywhere. Having a display screen can save a lot of troublesome steps. The above picture is the display screen I personally bought, and I did not buy a screen with wires to assemble like many geek classmates. I mainly bought a mature product considering that it can be used in other situations.
Similarly, a convenient display screen combined with a wireless keyboard and mouse allows you to play anytime and anywhere. Of course, power management needs to be well managed to avoid unnecessary troubles, so it’s best to buy a professional product directly.
I didn’t buy either of these, so I won’t discuss my feelings.
Finally, I would like to add that I personally think it is unnecessary to buy the popular Raspberry Pi sensor kit on Taobao. When learning other microcontrollers, some people also ask this question. I personally think these kits are quite similar in use. If you don’t delve into the principles of the sensors but just want to use them, they won’t help you learn much.
Learn one, and I believe you can extrapolate the usage methods of others. It’s not too late to buy specific sensors when you actually need them for a project.
The memory card you buy does not come with a system, so beginners need to install the system themselves and configure the Raspberry Pi. I won’t replicate the Raspberry Pi configuration here, as I am also a rookie who learned from others’ tutorials.
Here I recommend the Raspberry Pi configuration tutorial by “Tongji Zihai Xiong” [3]. I followed his tutorial and found it simple, but you can learn a lot by going through it.
Beginners often encounter many silly problems when configuring Raspberry Pi. These problems catch those experts off guard, and they definitely wouldn’t think of them when making tutorials. Here are a few, just to throw out some ideas.
Many beginners follow the tutorial step by step and finally write the system. After unplugging the card reader and plugging it directly into the USB port of the Raspberry Pi, when powered on, only the red light (PWR) is on, while the green light (ACT) is not on, and they can’t enter the system. After searching online, they panic, thinking, “Is my Raspberry Pi broken?!”
In fact, the red light being on indicates that the power is normal, while the green light being on indicates that the memory card is in use. If the memory card slot of the Raspberry Pi is currently empty, the green light will naturally not light up.
The reason for this result is likely that the command was typed incorrectly, especially for some long commands. Here, I suggest directly copying and pasting the commands from the tutorial to avoid errors.
The Raspberry Pi is still a fragile board. Directly using a power bank to power the Raspberry Pi or using a high-power charger to power the Raspberry Pi is dangerous for it. Some power banks are 5V/1A, while the Raspberry Pi 3B+ requires 5V/2.5A [4]. Generally, such a phone charger plug is not available on the market.
Using a home phone charger plug is also possible, but it may cause some unexpected problems, such as sudden keyboard and mouse lag, sudden network lag, performance crashes, etc. Do not poke at the Raspberry Pi’s pins with powered devices, as Dalvin often says: “Improper power on will damage the chip.”
After less than a day of exploration, I believe you can configure the Raspberry Pi. Thanks to Python, you no longer have to spend a lot of energy and time on writing programs and debugging. Whatever ideas you have, you can quickly realize them with this tool.
Collection of Related Articles on Raspberry Pi:
Raspberry Pi + Computing Stick 2 Completes Real-Time Face Recognition Project
Building NAS with Raspberry Pi 4, Making Hard Drives Easily Connected to the Internet
Using Raspberry Pi to Remotely Control Home Appliances with Web Interface
Remote Monitoring with Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi Partner Logic Analyzer, Testing I2C Signals
Unboxing Debut! Raspberry Pi 4 Hands-On Test!
We are NiMo, the founder of Dalvin, a sister who only talks about technology and not about flirting. The Dalvin online education platform aims to serve professionals in the electronics industry, providing skill training videos covering popular topics in various subfields, such as embedded systems, FPGA, artificial intelligence, etc. It customizes layered learning content for different groups, such as commonly used knowledge points, disassembly assessments, electric competitions/intelligent cars/postgraduate entrance examinations, etc. Welcome to follow.
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